UMECUnited Mining Exploration Commission: A group of friends playing JumpGate-- "a MMORPG that launched smoothly, breaks from fantasy character setting, emphasizes PvP, and is the first persistent world space simulator that nobody talks about." ~Scorch

I don't know what the most lucrative course of action is, but I am really into the combat. I take the default Talon and ~300K initial credits and upgrade it for combat worthiness. Check the economy screen to see where the deals on equipment are. You can always take patrols missions to get some extra credits before you are combat ready. After that I go around killing Durango freighters and look for gold or any other goodies. I usually hunt between Belt Station and IO Mining. Get a sniffer as soon as you can so you can detect the important stuff quicker after a kill.

I usually see several people playing on Saturday nights. One night one of the players gave me a Durango to pick up any spoils after their kills. I picked up nearly 3M credits of stuff and all he asked for was 1M and I could keep the freighter. Right now I have been playing for about 2-3 weeks and have a net worth of probably 11M. I could probably do better if I was mining and trading but I enjoy the hunt.

Also I play some nice space mood music MP3's (70's Tangerine Dream) with Media Player in the background.

The internet game is working pretty good because of the effort at
www.Terminuspoint.com. They have a patch called TPE (TerminusPoint Edition) they helps a lot with the lag problem when the game was originally released. You really must have it on their server or you will suffer some pretty bad lag (or at least I did before I patched). Get the patch and then create a character on Sol1. I was so impressed with their dedication to keep a server up and make improvements to the game that I donated $25 to TerminusPoint.

Hope to see you out there!

not quite sure about this game compared to Elite (and it's descendents)...haven't seen any screenshot galleries yet, but here's a nice site. (bit like PJG with news comments and all)

I *LOVE* how you know what other ships and bases are up to. This is the first big "sandbox" game (which includes Hardwar, Terminus, and even Morrowind) that really provides you with a LOT of information on the goings-on around you.

To use an example, let's use Terminus. Terminus, despite its ugly graphics and somewhat suspect newtonian flight model, was a pretty good representation of a small, working dynamic universe. However, much of what went on in the universe was a mystery -- ships would be flying around, combats would be occuring, and the player would effectively be isolated from all of this because of the dearth of information. Because of this lack of information, the ships (and NPC) pilots may have just as well be randomly generated, ala BC3k. This isolation was enough to turn me off from the game.

Morrowind is much the same way. There's a ton of NPCs out there, but they have no sense of purpose or agenda. That adds to the sense of disconnection and isolation. (Modders have addressed this issue in many way, particularly with companions, but there still isn't the feeling of a "living world").

Hardwar did an excellent job with its dynamic economy, and comes close to Freelancer with world interactivity.

Freelancer doesn't have the complex dynamic model that Terminus has, but DAMN is it a kick in the pants to hear the NPC ships interacting -- trade manifests and locations, police requests, and the like. There's a great "feel" to Freelancer's universe, even if the economy is not dynamic.

Anybody else think that this is the best part of Freelancer?

I guess the question boils down to: "Why, after all of this time, can't anyone get it right:"

- Privateer freedom juxtaposed with a great big story;
- Dynamic economy ala Hardwar;
- Persistent universe ala Terminus (yes, once an NPC ship was created it stuck around in the universe and you could meet up with it much later...if it hadn't been destroyed by then);
- Player-centralized (if unrealistic) information per Freelancer;
- Modern day graphics engine;
- Decent cause-effect political/caste system (Privateer, et al).

Terminus, despite its ugly graphics and somewhat suspect newtonian flight model, was a pretty good representation of a small, working dynamic universe. However, much of what went on in the universe was a mystery -- ships would be flying around, combats would be occuring, and the player would effectively be isolated from all of this because of the dearth of information. Because of this lack of information, the ships (and NPC) pilots may have just as well be randomly generated, ala BC3k. This isolation was enough to turn me off from the game.

Myth wrote:

Anyone who is interested in Terminus, or still has the game kicking around might be interested in this:

TerminusPoint ... a User Supported 24x7 game server dedicated to playing Terminus is at www.TerminusPoint.com. The Primary Game Server is available at Sol1.TerminusPoint.com (209.98.23.194). Our hope is to build a large enough community here that we can justify adding additional game Servers. The Primary Web Server is at www.TerminusPoint.com.

TPE is the TerminusPoint Edition of Terminus. It is a bug fixed and enhanced version based on Terminus V1.81 code under license from VVisions. TPE is a product of TerminusPoint.com and available for all licensed users of Terminus.

Brian Rucker wrote:

At any rate I agree with Scharmers (as usual) about the opacity of characters/ships in these games taking away what could be the most interesting aspect. It bugged me to no end that while the ships in Terminus were persistant and even had AI that could generate 'dynamic' relationships between pilots (individual ships could end up as allies, and travel together despite faction affiliation, or blood foes even to the point of posting bounties on each other) there was no way you'd ever have any idea what was going on or why. I felt more that I was watching a very interesting fishtank than travelling among fellow space jocks. When I was commenting on my recent adventures with Battlecruiser one of my first observations was that one couldn't hail or communicate with other ships - matter of fact this was just about the first thing I tried once I got spaceborne. I like context.